


ACE in the hole

by lucdarling



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Growing Old, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Max, Post-Episode: s03e08 The Battle of Starcourt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24188941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/pseuds/lucdarling
Summary: Max wonders if sometimes her trauma is written on her skin amongst her freckles, if it’s that obvious to a near stranger.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	ACE in the hole

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been kicking around in my head for a while. Mostly unbeta'd with a thanks to Buildyourwalls and pterawaters for looking over one section.

Lucas notices them first, knowing Max's body almost better than herself.

"Hey, what's this?" he asks when they're lying in bed. His hand ghosts up her left thigh, across the pale skin and a ring of red that Max hasn't noticed before. "How long has it been there?"

Max shrugs as best she can when she's resting on her side, lifts her leg straight up to get a better look. She can feel the heat in Lucas’s gaze when she puts her flexibility on display but they literally just finished having sex and she’ll be sore tomorrow if they go again.

"I don't know, what's it look like?" She puts her leg down and Lucas keeps his hand on her as he sits up for a closer look.

He blinks and Max watches his intense concentration. She laughs to break the tension. They're in their 30s now, it can't be anything serious. Not really, not at their age.

"Uh, I'm not a doctor but it looks like ringworm. But not."

Max echoes his diagnosis with a screech. "Ringworm? I've never been outside the United States!"

"We went to Canada last year to see Erica at McGill," Lucas points out, laying back down and putting an arm under his head.

"We drove," Max retorts, flipping the sheet over her body and hiding whatever is on her skin. "It doesn't count." Lucas chuckles, already falling back to sleep. He pulls her closer and she lets him, curls up against his side and breathes him in.

"Whatever you say, babe."

The not-ringworm disappears as summer's heat starts to wane and Max forgets about it. If it appears again, close to the same spot on the outside of her thigh during the stress of tax season and getting everyone filed on time, she doesn't mention it. Lucas doesn't say anything either, but she can see the worried crease between his eyebrows as it disappears and reappears.

The summer the following year is difficult, the twenty year anniversary of Starcourt and their survival and her brother's death. A few years of therapy, some even with Lucas under the guise of marriage counseling because Max dreaded making her mother's mistakes and his mother had offered to find a referral, helped her come to terms with her first two years of living in Hawkins.

The rash - rings - whatever they are, make a blotchy appearance around the same time that fireworks begin to sell out at the neighborhood stands. The marks are ugly and Max sweats in knee length denim shorts cut from her favorite pair of jeans. Lucas walks around shirtless, cargo shorts and backwards baseball caps like he stepped out of the 1990s just to make Max laugh as they weed the small garden they call a backyard.

"I think you should see someone," Lucas broaches carefully one night at dinner, picking his words with care.

"I'm fine," Max says automatically. She learned from a young age that doctors meant questions meant something bad. "They don't hurt, they just itch? But not all the time!"

Lucas sighs like Max is trying his patience. "I'll make you an appointment for next week. I'll go with you, even." He cajoles like the problem is Max having to sit in a waiting room on her own. Sometimes she forgets that not everyone has difficulty with hospitals or doctors in general.

"I can go, I don't need you to hold my hand." Max snaps, defensive. It's too hot outside and it's only marginally warmer indoors since the a/c is on its last legs. The heat, the upcoming anniversary makes her crankier than usual.

Her tone softens in apology. "I'm sorry." Lucas nods his head. "You don't need to come with," Max repeats and reaches out to take his hand in hers, marvels that they still fit together so well after so many years. "I'll let you know what the doctor says."

A few days later, Max swings her feet and listens to the paper gown crinkle. She thought it was dumb, the rings were probably just stress or something. They didn't hurt, it was just ugly. If she was younger, she would have made a joke about her outsides matching her insides, but she’s 34 now and old enough to know that isn't true. Lucas loving her so faithfully, so earnestly had a lot to do with that too.

The doctor comes in before her mind can wander further, a middle-aged woman because if Max had to see someone in authority it sure as hell wouldn't be a gross man telling her about her own body. The woman sits down at the computer, types a few notes and finally turns in her chair to look at Max.

"You've got a rash?" Max shrugs, because she doesn't know what to call it and that's the whole reason she's sitting here in a too cold exam room in the first place. She pulls up the gown to where her thigh meets her hip, no shyness about it and lets the doctor take a look.

The woman hums, touches the skin and stretches it a little with one gloved hand. Max tells her honestly none of that hurts, it only itches sometimes and she first noticed them last summer but they went away. They came back briefly during tax season because she’s a certified CPA and April is always hell but now with summer and the holiday so close it’s like they’ve never left. Max even mentions the small ring on the underside of her knee that she doesn’t think Lucas has noticed yet, she caught sight of it two days ago in the shower.

The doctor sits in her chair, spends a long moment looking at whatever the records for Max say and then stands. "Why don't you get dressed, Max, and then come to my office? I want to talk about something and it’s best we both be comfortable."

Max swears a blue streak as the door shuts behind the doctor, yanks up her shorts and pulls her braid from the neck of her tank top. This is it, she's dying.

The doctor smiles at her when Max finally finds the office. There’s no pity in the action and there are a few papers spread out in front of the guest chair. Max shuts the door behind her when the doctor nods her head.

"I took a look at your chart," the doctor begins and Max frowns. Before she can interject, the doctor looks at her seriously. "Not everything from your childhood is digitized, we're still getting around to our own patient records from the early '90s ourselves. I don't mean to be indelicate but was your home life not the best, when you were growing up?"

Max's expression goes blank and she knows that's a tell in and of itself. She digs her fingers into her palm, curling her hands into fists where they lay in her lap. "Yeah, something like that." she manages to say. It's been years and most days Max can even obliquely reference what it was like growing up in that house on Cherry Lane or back in California before everything went downhill. This close to the anniversary of Billy's death though, it's a wonder she isn't blinking back tears. Everything hits a little too close to home around this time of year.

"There's been a study from Kaiser Permanente that looked at the effect of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs and how these things affect your health later in life." The lady across the desk pushes a paper with graphs and charts towards Max, who can only glance at it with the way her mind buzzes like a swarm of bees. "There's a short paper-based test, if you wanted to take it and answer questions but you're not required."

"I wasn't hit as a child," Max speaks up before the doctor can go farther.

"There are other experiences," the doctor says gently. "Abuse isn't just physical, and if you grew up in a household where abuse occurred you were also a victim."

She's not saying anything Max hasn't already heard from her therapist. Max wonders if sometimes her trauma is written on her skin amongst her freckles, if it’s that obvious to a near stranger like this doctor.

"That sort of environment certainly qualifies as an ACE, Max." The doctor's voice is so gentle, like Max is going to fall to pieces in front of her.

"Got it," Max replies, voice short. She needs this conversation to be over. "So the weird rash on my leg that looks like ringworm but isn't is because I grew up in a shitty home and it's probably gonna happen for the rest of my life?" She doesn't drum her fingers on the side of the chair only because they're still clenched. The room feels too small, too dark for Max to be comfortable even though the lights are fluorescent and much too bright.

"Your rash definitely isn't ringworm," The doctor's smile is warm and Max wishes she could be in on the joke too, wishes she was sitting anywhere but here in this office. She wishes Lucas was here, so she won't have to recount everything tonight. "It will likely reoccur in times when you are under stress, and heat like this current summer."

"At least I'm alive," the words slip out before Max can swallow them down. She feels a vindictive glee in the split-second expression of horror-sadness on the woman and apologizes in her next breath. She's doing that more often, reminding herself to be kind. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. It's just a lot, especially right now." The doctor accepts her words and doesn’t push further. She shows her out of the office back to the reception desk, walking in silence. Max clutches a sheaf of papers as she leaves.

She sits at home with a mug of herbal tea, considers getting her night guard from upstairs if she’s going to clench her jaw so much and finally looks at the papers. Max sets aside the study almost immediately, scientific jargon has never been her idea of a fun time but maybe Lucas will want to read it.

The paper with the graphs puts into words and pictures what the doctor was trying to tell her. Thanks to a number of reasons (living with the Hargrove family, interacting with the Upside Down, being subject to her mother's absent parenting -- though Max knows she'd tried her best), Max knows she can expect more than the average number of health problems to come her way. Her health is going to probably suffer more than Lucas I've-never-had-a-cold-in-my-life Sinclair. Lucas, who grew up with the nuclear family where voices weren’t raised and doors weren’t slammed. She knows it’s not quite that cut and dry, understands that small town Indiana was no picnic for his parents in the 1980s as affluent black Americans but they had enough money for a vacation every other year or two. It was a different sort of family than Max was used to, one she got glimpses of during her standing weekly dinner invitation in high school.

Lucas comes into the house before she can start to catalogue all the other differences in their upbringing, knowing nothing good is going to come of her spiraling thoughts on July 3.

“What’d the doc say?” Lucas calls out as he shucks his shoes at the door, hangs his work jacket up. He sits down next to her on the couch, tilts his head to look at Max’s face before he puts an arm around her shoulders or draws her in for a quick kiss.

“She gave me a study,” Max says and pushes the paper towards him with one finger. She curls up against his side, knees drawn up to her chest as he skims it. “Adverse Childhood Experiences apparently have an effect on you later in life, who woulda thought.”

“You’re still my girl,” Lucas says softly, setting the papers down. “Nothing's gonna change that. And I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

“Thanks,” Max says against his neck. “But if you say my scars made me who I am, I will punch you.” She’s only halfway joking but humor is how she’s going to process this news, this tidbit in amongst the anniversary and not having a panic attack when fireworks start getting set off when dusk falls in an hour. 

She’s not dying, not anytime soon if she has anything to say about it. This ACE stuff is just another reason to eat healthy, think more realistically about exercising on a regular basis and probably talk with her mother about taking care of herself since Max isn’t moving in anytime soon to do so for her.

It’s a summer evening and it’s finally raining, the day’s sticky humidity falling away as the downpour continues. Max and Lucas sit on the couch, leaning against each other, holding each other just a little bit tighter as the sun goes down and their neighbors start to celebrate.

“I love you,” Max whispers. Lucas smiles and gives her finger guns like the dork he never grew out of being.

“I know.” She hits him that time, and they laugh as the sky blooms into red and blue above their heads. Neither of them watch the fireworks.

**Author's Note:**

> Link to the discussed study [here](https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/acestudy/about.html) and with [an infographic](https://vetoviolence.cdc.gov/apps/phl/resource_center_infographic.html)


End file.
